Eisenbud's Odyssey: Anti-anxiety nation

The world has much to learn from a group of people who somehow continue to maintain their balance and composure, despite being within the eyes of unrelenting perfect storms.

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(photo credit:MCT)

When I was living in New York City, I knew dozens of men and women – sadly, even
children – who lived in a chronic state of fear of varying degrees, resulting in
a reliance on anti-anxiety medications. Based on the mass media’s ratings-driven
“if it bleeds it leads” ethos, compounded by the trauma that 9/11 brought the
city, it’s little wonder why. To be sure, if America was a “Prozac Nation” in
the ’90s, by the time I moved to Israel in 2010, it had become conditioned to be
a “Xanex Nation.”

The numbers speak for themselves: According to the
Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders have become the
most prevalent form of mental illness in the US, afflicting some 40 million
Americans aged 18 and older (roughly 20 percent of the country’s adult
population). This costs the US more than $42 billion a year – nearly
one-third of the country’s $148b. total mental health expenditure, according to
The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Indeed, US anxiety levels have
reached epidemic proportions, despite the fact that America’s borders are
comparatively secure, and its citizens have endured a relatively nominal number
of terrorist attacks.

Conversely, and counter-intuitively, data shows that
the prevalence of anxiety among Israelis is markedly lower, despite the
country’s epically volatile borders and constant acts and threats of violence
against it.

While this information is based on a relatively limited body
of research, according to a 2011 study by the Center for Academic Studies, only
8.6% of the general Israeli population take anti-anxiety medications – over 50%
less, per capita, than their American counterparts.

Furthermore, according
to Psychiatric and Behavioral Disorders in Israel, published in 2009, a World
Mental Health Survey found that Israelis have a 5.2% average lifetime prevalence
of any anxiety disorder.

Given Israel’s geopolitical quagmire and the
disproportionate threats it continues to face, the authors concluded: “This is
striking, as it is one of the lowest rates found in any of the numerous
participating countries – for which rates ranged from 5% to 31%.”

ISRAELIS DON’T bury their heads in the sand,
and are in no way immune to fear or anxiety. On the contrary, they’re acutely
aware of the many clear and present dangers surrounding them at any given time –
going so far as to create various state-of-the-art early warning detection
systems.

The difference between Israelis and their Western counterparts,
I believe, is that they have experienced so much unabated violence and tragedy
since the country’s founding in 1948 that they have been forced to become
mentally conditioned to absorb and compartmentalize the blows – and to
productively move on – more than the citizens of any other democracy in the
modern world.

This is not so much a choice as an ultimatum, as the
alternative is living amid an untenable contagion effect of fear and panic,
until finally going mad. Or worse: of leaving the country they so desperately
need and love.

Ultimately, Israelis’ resilience is the result of an
advanced psychological survival mechanism based on adapting to hard, untractable
realities. In short, it’s Darwinism in real time.

One need not have a PhD
in psychology to understand the simplicity of this logic.

Clinical data
aside, I have experienced firsthand how Israelis deal with trauma.

MY
FIRST assignment as a reporter for The Jerusalem Post was on the afternoon of
March 23, 2011, when a terrorist bomb went off during rush hour near the
capital’s busy central bus station – where thousands of men, women and children
were coming and going from work and school.

The result of the explosion,
beyond killing a female British tourist, was no different than it would be
anywhere else: pure hysteria.

As I ran to the site of the attack, I saw
hundreds of people attempting to flee to safety with terror in their eyes.
Several helicopters hovered overhead and innumerable soldiers and police
officers rushed to the scene in cars, on motorcycles and by foot, machine guns
in hand.

Paramedics treated dozens of bloodied victims of the shrapnel,
as teenagers stared blankly off into space, trembling, or clutching one another
in tears while weeping inconsolably. Horrified parents rushed to the scene with
bloodshot, tear-soaked eyes, desperately trying to find out whether their
children or spouses were safe.

Others were glued to their cell phones,
telling their loved ones they were still alive.

Every single person I
interviewed was profoundly traumatized.

It was hell on
earth.

HOWEVER, HERE’S what sets Israelis apart: The next day, even as
trails of blood were still being cleaned off the sidewalks, it was business as
usual in Jerusalem. Despite having their cage mercilessly rattled, Israelis
returned to a life that most people would have gladly evacuated in the blink of
an eye.

In a follow-up story I put together a few days after the bombing,
I interviewed sabra after sabra – young and old – all of whom said the same
thing: “Life must go on.”

It was humbling to hear, and I reported their
sentiments with great pride.

Indeed, their uniformly stoic responses
inspired me to write an e-mail to my concerned family and friends saying that
despite working and living near the site of the deadly attack – and facing the
danger of another one just like it – I would stay in the country, following the
examples of my brave brothers and sisters.

OVER A year has passed since
then, littered with numerous unconscionable acts of violence perpetrated against
the men, women and children of this country. And while the definitive clinical
jury may still be out as to why they are so resilient against a backdrop of
unrelenting terror and antagonism, their grace and courage under fire remains
transcendental to me.

There is no doubt that we all have much to learn
from this most unusual group of people, who continue to thrive and celebrate
life, despite the many threats and obstacles against them.

In the
meantime, even as gas masks are being distributed to the general population here
amid incessant threats by a sadistic tyrant attempting to wipe them off the face
of the earth, nothing will change this fact.